The Venom movie will feature his homicidal arch-nemesis

While we’re still wondering whether our friendly neighborhood web-head will be appearing in the upcoming Venom spin-off, or whether those movies are somehow connected to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, some hard details are starting to leak out. Namely, we know against whom our anti-hero will be facing off. If you’re a fan of Spidey and all his friends, you already have a good guess. As fearsome as Venom is, it’s his kid that’s truly frightening.

The Hollywood Reporter spoke with Sony Pictures boss Tom Rothman in a piece profiling how the Sony-Marvel love story that gave us Spider-Man: Homecoming began. In this piece, THR writes that the Venom film, dated for October 5, 2018, will feature Carnage as the main villain. THR also writes that while Tom Holland is only obligated to do Spider-Man‘s second and third films (or is that seventh and eighth?), Sony wants to “bring him into the spinoffs and possibly other Marvel films.”

Maximum Carnage

Here’s a quick primer of just who Carnage is. The villain we know as Venom began life in the comic books as a new, jet-black suit that Spidey wears for a while. The suit is in fact an alien symbiote that began taking Peter Parker out for late-night crime-fighting sessions while he was asleep. After Peter rejected the symbiotic bond, the suit bonded with Eddie Brock, a reporter with a grudge to bear against Peter Parker and Spider-Man, becoming the villain Venom. Spider-Man, of course, eventually defeated Venom, which put Brock in a prison cell with the serial killer Cletus Kasady. The symbiote found its way back to Brock and, in the process, left behind an offspring that bonded with Kasady, creating a super-powered serial killer that immediately escaped prison and went on a killing spree. That forced Spider-Man and Venom to team up, giving Venom his first shot as an anti-hero.

That is, of course, a massively abridged version of the story, but suffice to say that Carnage should provide Venom plenty of challenge and could even offer a great point of entry for Holland’s Spider-Man to appear in the film if Sony indeed wants to go that direction.